by Debbie Walker

Have you ever been involved in a conversation and realized you don’t really remember much of it?? It has happened to me. Sometimes I would be so engrossed in what my clients were saying…….at least that’s what I thought I was doing.

However, truthfully, I was hearing things they wanted and my head was actually in high gear trying to think of my answers to them.

I saw these words in something I was reading: “The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand. We listen to reply.” Oh yeah, the light bulb came on and I saw that I fit right in the category of non-listener.

All that time I was listening to the comments I could help out with, evidently, I wasn’t hearing the whole story, only parts.
We started our holiday season already with Thanksgiving, one of the “conversation” holidays, it’s over. The month of December generally hits us all with more family and/or friend’s parties, dinners, get togethers of all kinds. There will be people that we care about but only see on holidays, once every few years. There is so much we have missed in each other’s lives and without realizing it in our “conversations” we are busy coming up with things we want the other to know about us. Oops. We just missed most of what they were trying to tell us about them.

I also just realized that we use a form of selective hearing when we deal with children, spouses; maybe it’s because we think we know already where they are going with their conversations. I have learned with my little niece Haliegh that I need to be on my toes! That child is very smart, very conversational and if you’re smart you don’t want to miss it. The kids at the school where I am a foster grandparent/teacher I have learned to listen closely. They have some wonderful ideas.

We did a “circle story” with the class this fall. We started with the teacher making up the first sentence of the story and then it goes on to the first child, the next and the next, right around to all 15 kids, each kept up their part of the circle. It was wonderful! These are only first graders!

If you have kids at home of any age I encourage you to listen carefully to what they say to you. It might be tougher with teens; they have already learned to not talk to an adult because they probably don’t want to listen to you anyway. Let’s change this where we can.

Family and friends will remember any discussion with you when you have been actively listening to them. Let them talk; you can make comments but remember to listen to understand, I promise your interest will be noticed.

Contact me at dwdaffy@yahoo.com sub: Communication problem. Thanks for reading. Looking forward to any communication.

PS: Put the cell phone away while with others!

Submitted by the Taconnett Falls Chapter of the Maine Genealogical Society

Amy Morris Bradley was born September 12, 1823. She spent her youth in the family home in East Vassalboro. Her father’s cobblers shop was in the north section of the house. The main house consisted of two front rooms, kitchen, pantry and upstairs chambers. Eight family members lived and worked in this small house.

Amy Morris Bradley

Amy’s life was dedicated to education and helping others. She taught school in Vassalboro and Gardiner, also, the Winthrop School and Putnam Grammar, in Massachusetts. She suffered from a weak body, but she more than made up for it by forceful determination. Periodically she would return to East Vassalboro to recuperate and then forge ahead again.

During one of her recuperations, she was invited to stay at her sister in law’s family home in Charleston, South Carolina. Being an abolitionist and prohibitionist she had to mute some of her beliefs while she was visiting. Amy was treated very well and soon recovered though the visit did reinforce her views on both slavery and alcohol.

Amy was a governess for a short time in Costa Rica. The plantation owner overstated the opulence of his holdings and treated her more like a servant than teacher. She left that employment and went to the city of San Jose. Having become fluent in Spanish she went on to start the first English School there in 1854. Amy returned to Maine in 1857 to care for her ill father.

The fluency in Spanish that she gained in Costa Rica allowed her to pursue other employment. After her father died, Amy moved to Boston and worked as a translator for different companies.

The Civil War brought her to her toughest task, nursing. She was first attached to the 3rd Maine Regiment, and then put in charge of 5th Maine’s hospital, and then worked for the United States Sanitary Commission. She supervised and worked on the steam transports in the Peninsula Campaign. Before she would allow wounded soldiers on board, the entire boat would have to be cleaned to her particularly high standards. With her success on the transports she was put in charge of the Sanitary Commission’s home in Washington DC, where discharged wounded soldiers began

Amy Morris Bradley’s grave located at the Oakdale Cemetery, in Wilmington, North Carolina. Internet photos

their journey home. Her final position was head of Camp Convalescent, a wet muddy field that was the hospital for recovering soldiers. She soon put it in order with tents, beds, bedding and decent food. The Soldiers Journal was a newspaper she published for her charges.

After the war, she continued her efforts by working for the Freemans Bureau setting up schools for freed slaves and poor white children. One of the things that she discovered was that a hungry child would not do well academically. Amy set up kitchens at her schools so that the pupils had at least one nutritious meal a day. She established the first Normal School and is considered the founder of the school system in Wilmington, North Carolina. She died there January 15, 1904 and is buried in Oakdale Cemetery.

Headstrong, the biography of Amy Morris Bradley, by Diane Cobb Cashman is the source for this article.

Kent G. London
President Kennebec Historical Society
Treasurer Vassalboro Historical Society
Member Taconnett Falls Chapter
(taconnettfalls11@yahoo.com)

by  Peter Cates

Brook Benton and Dinah Washington

Baby; I Do; Mercury- 71565, seven-inch vinyl 45, recorded 1959.

Singer Dinah Washington (1924-1963) landed a contract with Mercury records in 1946 and performed songs from a variety of genres including jazz, blues, R&B, novelties, covers, etc., amassing a sizable pile of disks for the label.

Meanwhile, the much younger, less experienced Brook Benton (1931-1988) had been signed and was making headway with his own brand of pop, when a lyricist Clyde Otis got the idea of bringing the two together for the recording of a song he had written, Baby.

Due to the dissimilarly strong personalities of both singers, a firestorm of sorts ensued. But some kind of deal was hashed out and the two would record Baby and eventually three others before Washington walked out of one of their studio session.

Baby was a mega hit; the spirited but contrived aura of sexual tension between the two, as they sang, worked its musical and monetary magic and the performance was a classic R&B romp, still deserving of hearing 57 years later.

Schubert

Trout Quintet – Members of the Budapest String Quartet with pianist Mieczyslaw Horszowski and bassist George Moleux; Columbia ML 4317, 12-inch mono vinyl lp, recorded 1950.

This music has a bubbly, lovable charm and is the best piece with which to start listening to chamber music, its 4th movement being based on one of the composer’s songs, Die Forelle, or the Trout. It received its first performance in the living room of a wealthy music lover. Also to be noted, Schubert wrote all of the individual parts of each of the five instruments before putting everything together.

The players give a very spirited performance, still available in different venues on the internet.

Martinu

Violin Concerto No. 2, with violinist Bruno Belcik and Vaclav Neumann conducting the Prague Symphony; Piano Concerto No. 3, with pianist Josef Palenicek and Karel Ancerl conducting the Czech Philharmonic; Artia ALS 7205, 12-inch stereo vinyl LP, recorded mid-to-late ‘50s.

Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959) was a Czech-born composer who produced 400 works in the various genres- symphonic, chamber, opera, etc. He confounded so many critics by this productivity because he also maintained a consistent level of high quality, due to regular efficient yet exacting work habits.

Because he lived several years in France, Switzerland and the U.S., his music has an array of qualities – a tight sense of structure; a powerful aura of drama and surging emotion; the infectious rhythms of jazz and Stravinsky; the charm of native slavic folk music; and the exotic, colorful sonorities of such composers as Bartok, Janacek, Roussel and other 20th century figures. But, most importantly, it has a vibrant individuality that gives his writing such staying power after listening to, and living with it for a while.

Both works here demand committed listening before their veiled beauties reveal themselves and the performances are top notch. Only vinyl LPs are available on Amazon of this coupling, starting at $7.50.

A couple of tidbits. When Martinu was a child, his father was the sexton of a church and the family was allowed to live in the tower apartment; being very sickly, the boy was frequently carried up the 143 steps to the family quarters by his father or older sister.

In 1946, while teaching at the Boston Symphony’s summer home in Tanglewood, Martinu was given a magnificent rooftop bedroom at a local estate. One night while walking on the veranda, he fell through a gap in the railing and sustained a fractured skull and concussion. The recuperation period took three to four years during which he gave up all composing. The Wiki bio provides other interesting details of a rich full life for any curious reader.